Page 18 - NMRA Roundhouse September October 2020

I own two layouts and a few Freemo modules, all in HO. My first love was the Southern Pacific with Santa Fe and BN in second and third. From 1996 I had to embrace UP....
One layout,The Texas Pacific Lines, is a fixed home layout filling out a log cabin in the back garden. It started life as a series of portable modules to fit the Thamesiders’ specification for Essex Belt Line’s Rosenberg,Texas and Dillon,Texas. The former never made it out; the latter was at the Ally Pally on 2013 as part of the Essex Belt Lines set up. It is based closely on Rosenberg Texas and features Tower 17 and operations West of Hou- ston; Dillon is fictitious and is located somewhere North East of Houston.
It is all operational and not scenically complete but it can keep three pairs of operating teams busy all day. I operate trains to represent the period from 1990 to date.
The second layout was acquired third- hand in 2019: Florence, Iowa (Rock Island). It was built originally by Peter North and depicts small town Mid-West USA with The Rock on its last legs.This is a preservation project since I do love the small gems that Peter North pro- duces. It was an opportunity I could not resist. It is very portable and was at the Benson Winter Meet earlier this year. It needs some restoration – trackwork in places, like the prototype depicted,needs replacement and the backscene has bub- bled with damp over the years.
Apart from all that I just love detailing and weathering locomotives or creating unusual liveries, like former SP locomo- tives patched/renumbered for UP but with yellow side sill stripes (few locos were ever so treated). I also recently “discovered” a good few locos I had stopped working on some years ago and have got those out. For example, an Athearn Genesis Santa Fe SD45-2 now has a Tsunami sound decoder in place of the MRC one and has been detailed to represent its last form in BNSF ownership.
Mike Arnold
DRGW GP60 switches Dillon TX and UP C44AC leads a manifest through Dillon TX
BNSF C44-9CW #4336 leads an NS unit past Tower 17 with a JB Hunt double stack train
A detailing job during lockdown - Athearn blue box ex-SP SD40T-2 now patched UP #2938
18 ROUNDHOUSE - September/October 2020 - 75thAnniversary Issue
MIKE ARNOLD REGION PRESIDENT 2014-2016
SP GP40-2 brings coal loads through Florence, Iowa Rock Island